


Your Warmth

by goatsongs



Category: Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
Genre: Arthur is a simp, Awkward Tension, Fluff, M/M, Other, They Are Idiots, Unresolved Romantic Tension, gay people are ridiculous, i managed to insert my non binary ford prefect agenda in here, like everything i write, self indulgent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-23
Updated: 2021-01-23
Packaged: 2021-03-15 20:27:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,756
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28944417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goatsongs/pseuds/goatsongs
Summary: Arthur is still a bit in shock from Earth being demolished, and Ford really wants him to sleep.Strange gay feelings ensue.
Relationships: Arthur Dent/Ford Prefect
Comments: 6
Kudos: 28





	Your Warmth

After the unpleasant experience of the hyperspace jump, which Arthur had experienced for the first time while still processing the destruction of the Earth, – along with his beautiful house! – Ford guided him down on one of the mattresses.  
  
“Sleep.” He said.  
  
Arthur balked at him.  
  
“What about the Vogons?” Arthur asked. He had heard the announcement of the angry Vogon captain threatening to read poetry at them and then throw them into the depths of space.  
  
“I will speak with them, don’t worry. Go to sleep.” Ford took two strides to turn the light off, and they were once again plunged into darkness. Arthur pushed down an unpleasant feeling of loss and lay down. He waited for sleep to come. It did not. He decided to try a fetal position. It felt a bit more like his mothers’ womb, which he certainly could not remember, but still nostalgically mourned not being in it right this moment. Though he was more comfortable, the distressing thought of never being able to be a baby again kept him awake, and the thought of never being able to see his mother also seemed to bother him in somewhat equal measure.  
  
After a few moments, he felt a soft towel being draped over him. He shifted again. He couldn’t hear Ford breathing, and that stressed him even further.  
  
“Ford?” His voice small and quiet in the drab blackness of the room.  
  
“Yes, Arthur?”  
  
Merely hearing his friend’s voice made his shoulders relax a fraction. Silence stressed for no longer than a few more seconds than normal. Scared of being alone in silence again, he opened his mouth once more.  
  
“I want to go home.” As he spoke, he felt like a small child. Why was he telling this to Ford? The Earth was gone, he had experienced it, lived through it and had pinched himself enough times to confirm that this was not a dream.  
  
He felt Ford sigh near him.  
  
“I’m sorry, Arthur.”  
  
Arthur could never tell Ford’s emotions from his face, as his smiles were often too wide and too quick to disappear, and worry showed rarely on his features. From his voice, however, it seemed to come through slightly.  
  
Arthur didn’t speak for a moment.  
  
“Do you have a home?” He then asked quietly.  
  
Ford stayed silent for so long that Arthur was suddenly scared of having asked an improper question. Just as he was about to open his mouth again to tell him not to pay any mind to his questions, Ford spoke again.  
  
“I- No, I suppose I don’t. Betelgeuse is where I’m from, but my home there was destroyed by a Hrung accident. And before you ask me what a Hrung is, trust me, I have no idea. I can never quite put it into words, strangely, and my father died with those words on his tongue, unspoken. Such a shame.. He never taught me much about the universe. So I wander the Galaxy,” he chuckled, “trying to know things.”  
  
Arthur wished he could see Ford’s eyes, and he gave into the impulse to reach out his hand and touch. He was aiming for a shoulder, he supposed, but didn’t quite reach. He touched a sideways bump for a second before realising it was an elbow. He felt Ford freeze, and then start moving. As Arthur’s hand made its way up to Ford’s shoulder, another hand caught it. Arthur felt warmth rise up to his cheeks.  
  
“I- I’m so sorry to- to hear that Ford. That must have been, uh, very hard for you.” He awkwardly mumbled as Ford’s fingers intertwined with his.  
  
“It’s alright. I don’t mind. Betelgeuse is a boring place anyway. A bit like Earth, except its inhabitants are-” he paused for a moment, as if carefully weighing his words, “colder.”  
  
Arthur felt the hand touching his, Ford’s skin seemed colder, more stretched, more damp– or was that his own sweat? He felt nervous. Holding the hand of his friend in the dark was surely something that was not as strange as everything else he had experienced until now. His house being demolished, Earth being demolished, the inside of a spaceship, a fish inside his ear translating every language in the Galaxy… The concept of the Galaxy itself! 

Yet what most made his heart beat nervously was this sudden intimacy with Ford. Arthur had never considered himself to be much of a traditionalist, when it came to other people. He had been mildly interested sexually and romantically in women, in the same way a man should appropriately be interested in matters of football or economics. Enough to make small talk, that is, and thus had always considered himself to be safely and securely heterosexual.  
  
Did this count as romantic? Was it even strange, or indeed… queer, that he should enjoy intimacy with a man such as Ford Prefect? Was Ford Prefect even a man, in this regard, or in any of the other regards?  
  
The frantic line of questioning brought him to a possibility that made his head reel and his heart stagger. He swallowed.  
  
“Colder, you say.” He said, his voice slightly strangled. 

  
Ford slowly untangled his hand from Arthur’s and coughed. Arthur felt a painful pang at the loss of touch.  
  
“You should get some sleep. You will need it.”  
  
Arthur frowned, hurt. The silence, tenser than it had been before, filled his ears, and felt so much worse than a fish climbing down his ear canal. He suppressed the urge to groan and instead hid his head in the mattress. It smelled strange. He turned his head back.  
  
He was never going to be able to sleep at this rate. He propped himself up on his elbows, squinting to see if his eyes were getting used to the dark. They were not. It was peculiar.  
  
“Ford?”  
  
Silence.  
  
“Ford?”  
  
Silence again. Then, “what is it?” Ford sounded frustrated.  
  
“Will you-” Arthur took a breath. What was it that he wanted from Ford? “Will you come- uh, here?”  
  
“What?”  
  
Arthur looked down at his hands – he couldn’t see them in the dark – and flexed his fingers.  
  
“Can we… hold hands… again?” Damn, he didn’t sound like the grown rational collected man he thought himself to be. He cursed himself, wishing he could take back the words which now hung in the air.  
  
Somewhere in the small room, he heard a long, drawn out sigh, and the sound of fabric rustling. His quickened heartbeat was so loud he wondered if Ford could hear it. He felt his friend get closer, sit close to him on the edge of the mattress.  
  
With an accuracy that made Arthur think Ford had the ability to see in the dark, Ford reached for his hand and held it. Arthur let his head drop to the pillow.  
  
“Would you-” Ford fell silent for a moment, “would you allow me to lay down with you? You see, I know on Earth it is something which requires a profound understanding of complicated social norms but, well, I-”  
  
“Yes.” Arthur interrupted and tugged him down, moving back to make space. He surprised himself as he did. The Arthur Dent he had been on Earth had been blunt, yes, but when it came to such intimacies he had always been lacking. Perhaps too shy or too indecisive, never knowing quite what he wanted, to the point were most of his sexual encounters with women had ended unsatisfactorily, and he had found he could always satisfy himself a lot better alone– he stopped the thought in its tracks. How inappropriate to think of such things just as his good friend was laying down next to him!  
  
Look, he reasoned to himself, Earth had been destroyed, the darkness seemed endless, and Ford was the only familiar thing in sight, though he could see nothing right now. Yet he could feel Ford’s body aligned with his own. He could hear Ford’s slow, impossibly quiet breath. He could taste his own dry tongue. He could smell on Ford a strange, sharp, and almost lemony scent.  
  
“You smell like lemons.” He couldn’t help but blurt out. 

“Do I? How peculiar. I had never noticed.” Ford seemed to be facing Arthur. He wondered again if his friend could see him. He seemed so close.  
  
“Ford?”  
  
“Yes, Arthur?”  
  
“Are you a man?”  
  
Ford chuckled. Arthur could feel the light breath on his cheek.  
  
“In a way, yes. According to English grammatical use, the use of masculine pronouns does align with my form, as I imagine it does for you.” Ford was saying, his voice hushed now that they found each other so close to one another. Arthur could hear the small sounds of Ford’s tongue against the roof of his mouth, his teeth bumping slightly as he spoke.  
  
“I feel a ‘but’ coming.” Arthur interjected.  
  
“ _But_ ,” Ford said pointedly, “I struggle to grasp the concept of gender. How it is defined, its norms and conventions. In many ways it seems similar to the concept of time. Everchanging. Real only to those who can define it, and only real in the ways each individual or group defines it as. Its norms and rules are dependent upon contexts, and you must understand that what surprised me most about it on Earth was its incredibly strict hierarchy. Am I, according to humanity, a man, because of the crop of my hair? The shape of my clothes or the pitch of my voice? Where are the lines, and if they are so blurred, how is it even possible to use it as a method of categorisation in the first place? I must admit it took me years to start telling the difference between men and women, with such arbitrary rules. Humans are so peculiar and–”  
  
“Okay! Alright. Okay. I understand.” Arthur interrupted the monologue before its intensity grew too much. Most of it had confused him anyway.  
  
“Do you? I certainly do not.”  
  
Arthur laughed. “Yes, well. It’s nice to see that you don’t know absolutely everything.”  
  
“Yes,” Ford chuckled with him. “There are many things about Earth that I would love for you to explain to me, Arthur. But right now I would love for you to sleep.”  
  
He tugged Arthur’s hand up and placed his lips against their conjoined hands.  
  
“Sleep.”  
  
Arthur closed his eyes, letting the warmth of Ford’s breath lull him to sleep. He dreamt of swirling sentences, the word ‘love’, shouted poetry, a planet falling, slugs climbing out of his ears and, overwhelmingly, Ford’s soft, unblinking eyes.  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> im reading hitchhikers guide to the galaxy for the first time and im gay
> 
> [send me an ask or smth.](https://italianjavert.tumblr.com/ask)
> 
> thank you for reading my self indulgent drivel, i would die for ford prefect goodnight


End file.
